I heard visual studio C# 2005 can make .net 1.1

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I heard visual studio C# 2005 can make .net 1.1

I heard before that if you use a comand line compiler with visual C# 2005 beta you can make .net 1.0, 1.1, or 2.0 exes. But you have to use a comand line compiler. Is this true? (I think I was messing around in visual C# 2005 and read that inside the program)

It isn't too hard. When I first started learning .NET I used the command line only. The fun part is having to type up everything when you go to compile. Unless of course you use a batch file or something similar.

Personally I don't see why Microsoft doesn't allow you to change the compiler used. :P

I believe this is because A) so much of the IDE's features rely on features in the compiler it is designed for, ie intellisense for generics, and B) they don't want people building 1.1 apps in 2005. They want you using 2.0. If you want 1.1, use VS 2003.

I imagine the true motivation behind it is to force companies to upgrade to have an IDE for future versions.

Contrary to popular opinion, I think this is a GOOD THING.

One of the biggest gripes people had with Microsoft was that their old Word '95 documents weren't compatible with Word '97 (or whatever versions it was). People whinged and whined for years about it. All because Microsoft decided not to be backwards compatible with older versions. Microsoft copped a lot of heat over this.

But Microsoft is a smart company. They said "I'm so sick of these people whinging and moaning, wah wah wah, we'll avoid this problem in the future". So since that day, the Word file format has been locked to the features of Word 97. Microsoft add a few new features to Word, but none of them can be saved because it will stuff up when you try and open your Word XP documents in Word 97.

But of course, people whinged and moaned again, because "Microsoft are so un-innovative, Office hasn't changed for years!". DAMN RIGHT IT HASN'T, AND IT'S YOUR OWN FAULT!

Now, when they developed .NET, Microsoft sat down for a while and did some soul searching. They asked themselves "if we were going to start fresh, what would we do to do everything perfect?". .NET was made. They added things like COM interop for backwards compatibility, but the whole framework was written with new standards. I think they did it all perfect.

Now, .NET 2.0 is coming out. Visual Studio 2005 is coming out. There are a ton of new intellisense and refactoring tools in Visual Studio 2005, and a lot of them make use of .NET 2.0 features. Microsoft have a choice - they can support both 2.0 and 1.1, and not show the new features when developing a 1.1 application, or they could just count on people upgrading to 2.0. They can get stuck in the world of maintaining backwards compatibility for years, or they can move on.

One reason Microsoft don't ship with a static linker (ie., you can't embed the .NET framework into your compiled EXE so that other computers don't need .NET installed, although there are third party apps that let you do this) is because Microsoft will be improving .NET. 2.0 fixes a number of bugs and possible security risks in 1.1. Microsoft WANT you to upgrade to 2.0. They want users to upgrade, they want developers to upgrade.

There are still a bazillion Word 97 users out there. They all say "it works fine for us, we don't need to upgrade". It only works fine because Microsoft is still maintaining that backwards compatibility for these users, and innovation is lost. Now, this is understandable from users because it costs money to upgrade versions of Word, and some just can't afford it.

But .NET is free. Microsoft don't want to be writing features in .NET 90.67 that have to be backwards compatible with .NET 1.0, just because Aunt May doesn't want to do a little download. And product developers want their code to run on every machine, they don't want calls from Aunt May saying their product doesn't work on her machine.

So Microsoft is making developers who use VS2005 to use .NET 2.0. You should be happy. Because when you use 2.0, your customers will be forced to upgrade. Luckily, all the upgrades will come as part of Windows Update, and they happen maybe once every 18 months at most, so life is easy for you and your users.

yah yah.... I guess. But they should FORCE people to get .net 1.1 and stuff. Cause I know people who don't have it and can't becasue lets say there parents don't want to dwonload somtin. But if it is a forced update they would have to.

question..

Just out of curiousity, alot of software is being developed using Visual Studio.net 2003 that uses 1.1 of the .NET Framework.
If everyone from developers to users upgrade to 2.0 - will they still be able to use software that was made using 1.1?

I believe this is because A) so much of the IDE's features rely on features in the compiler it is designed for, ie intellisense for generics, and B) they don't want people building 1.1 apps in 2005. They want you using 2.0. If you want 1.1, use VS 2003.

Can I upgrade my .NET to 2.0 and still use VS 2003 ?

And please tell me that MS did something right and 2.0 support older versions as well

As for using 2.0 with VS 2003, you can't. Each release of Visual Studio is literally hardcoded to a particular framework version. If you want to use 2.0, I suggest you get VS 2005. It's due out in November. The express editions are $50 each but rather weak. However, the standard edition is $300 and comes with all the languages I believe. Not too bad I suppose if you want to use .NET.